Marilyn Hamilton's Blog, page 50

Express Your Message Clearly and Congruently

This is one of series of blogs that are a retrospective reflection on Integral City Community of Practice’s experience in taking the In This Together (ITT) course on basic facilitation skills taught by Diane Musho Hamilton and Ten Directions.

In the third module of the course we turned from listening (in week 2) to expressing. We explored the value expressing ourselves with clarity and congruently. Diane asked us to consider that the voices we bring to the conversation impact the perspective we take. Therefore, it is critical that we develop some dexterity in using the voices of “I, we/you, he/she/they/it/its”.

In terms of Integral City these voices are situated in the 4 quadrants like this (which is also Map 1 of the Integral City).

Map 1: 4 quadrant 8 level Map of City Organs

 

What was the ITT homework?

We received this homework assignment:

Pay attention to how you communicate (and others communicate) in the 1st person (I/me), 2nd person (you/we) and third person (he/she/they/it/its).
Notice what you notice.

 

What did we experience in accomplishing the homework on communicating with the awareness of our 1st, 2nd, 3rd person voices?

As we practised communicating from the 3 voices, we remembered earlier lessons in this course. To choose a voice requires attention and intention (class 1). To initiate or respond to another’s communication we must listen actively and intently (class 2).

We were also surprised that being attentive to the voice we chose, brought back other teachings. One practitioner remembered Anne Wilson-Schaef’s injunction to notice “what I feel, what I want and what I need”. This practice often demanded special focus to discern the differences between what I want and what I need.

This also reminded her of the 1980’s when she was actively involved in the feminist movement where two practised a reciprocal exchange by sharing with the phrase “I want … “.  The listener would respond by saying “I want …” , and thereby both persons would utilize this ground rule to get clear on alignments or differences in their “wants”.

Another participant remarked that becoming aware of the voice she uses helps her get out of the habit of taking the same stance all the time; e.g. “being an authoritarian bossy self.”

Most of us agreed that it is both confusing and annoying when someone talks in 3rd person (he/she/they) when they are really talking in the 2nd person (you/we). This substitution dissociates the speaker from what they are really expressing. One participant even remarked, that she considers this practise demonstrates a lack of skilful means. She always wants to ask, “are you talking about me – if so, say so?”

In many Romantic and Germanic languages, the 2nd Person has two forms – formal/polite and informal/intimate. One of our group located in the Netherlands, noticed that in practising this week’s homework he had not used the formal/polite form of expression. This form of expression invited more familiarity.

This remark lead to one person sharing that using 1st person to tell a story demonstrates a level of vulnerability that can feel uncomfortable – especially in public gatherings. But we all agreed, by using 1st person with a genuine story in these circumstances, listeners will tend to listen to your story with more attention – and perhaps sympathy.

Finally, our discussion on expressing with clarity and congruence, surfaced the observation that a speaker can only express authentically from their own experience. Speaking from the 1st person tends to drop the barriers of dissociation that arise by using the 3rd person. In addition, it can protect the speaker from the dangers of projection that arise by assuming you know the experience of the 2nd person without inviting them to tell their own story.

 

So What does the topic/homework on communicating with the awareness of our 1st, 2nd, 3rd person voices have to do with Integral City practice or training?

As Integral City practitioners, we realized that we have the power to choose what voice we use. Each voice offers us a different expression of reality

We also related the 1st, 2nd and 3rd person voices in a fractal way to the 4 Quadrants of the Integral City and the 4 Voices of the Integral City. At the scale of the city those voices transform into the voices of the Citizen, Civil Society, Civic Manager and Business. Recognizing the fractal nature of voices expressed through linguistic expression helped us to associate them to the power of the 4 Integral City Voices as spokespeople. It is usually important to consider that the 4 City Voices want their Voice to be represented by one of their own. This enables a more natural and powerful connection to what is expressed.

We remembered as a Community of Practice who had undertaken the authorship of a chapter in the book Cohering the We: xxx that we learned how challenging it was, as we wrote the chapter together, to progress through distinct stages from a group of individual “I’s”, to an aggregate of “I’s” and finally to a “We”.  As one practitioner expressed we experienced a kind of alchemical change from I to We, “We started as “I’s” … then became a We with still an ability to have “I’s”.”

This experience helped us appreciate that in the city developmental stages emerge at all scales – in the individual, groups, organizations, communities and the city as a whole. So, we came to see that intentionally selecting the voice of expression can be supported developmentally with noticing, attention to the options, mutual coaching and practise as a group.

Now What will we do as a result, of our homework experience, sharing about communicating with the awareness of our 1st, 2nd, 3rd person voices?



We realized we could put the use of the 3 person voices into effect in our training. This would help us to give participants in our Integral City training a deeper experience of the 4 Voices in the Integral City.
In our training, we could design 1st, 2nd and 3rd person experiences into learning about the 4 voices of the Citizen, Civil Society, Civic Manager and Business.
We observed that 1st and 2nd person voices give us qualitative (subjective and intersubjective) exchanges (and data); wile 3rd person voices give us quantitative (objective and interobjective) exchanges (and data).
Each voice is valuable but partial. We can be intentional in our facilitation and training to seek input from all voices to gain a fuller picture of the whole human system – at any scale in the city.
A profound learning that we all gained was that in using any voice I/you-we/it/they create a relationship with others. Each of us has great power in choosing the voice we use and thereby creating separation or inclusion of our Self and Others in the conversation.
The pronoun I choose in my expression defines the relationship I will have. This is a fundamental insight for practising the Master Code.

Listen Intently and Actively

This is one of series of blogs that are a retrospective reflection on Integral City Community of Practice’s experience in taking the In This Together (ITT) course on basic facilitation skills taught by Diane Musho Hamilton and Ten Directions.

Our second instruction focused on listening intently and actively. We were surprised that this basic skill was actually a stretch – using un-used muscles of our attention capacity (from week 1).

Listening Intently & Actively

We noticed that in listening to another person we became aware that we would be called on to give something back. This happens when we affirm that we have heard the other person by re-stating in our own words what we heard the other person say. One of our group noticed that she felt very much more heard when the listener did not simply “parrot” back her own words but used synonyms that conveyed the meaning she had made of the communication.

We were a little surprised that listening actively impacted our ability to respond (What were we going to say next????) – but at the same time widened our experience of self to expand and include the other person. (Our first clue that listening is intimately connected to our practice of the Master Code.)

What was the ITT homework?

Our homework seemed deceptively simple in 3 steps.

Ask someone to listen to you for 3-5 minutes.
Offer to listen to the other person for 3-5 minutes.
Notice what you notice.

1. What did we experience in accomplishing the homework on listening?

Each of the “homeworkers” from the Integral City Community of Practice had a different experience in practising listening – both in choosing their listening partner and the context of the situation in which they listened.

Some of us chose life partners to listen to/with. In many ways, this presented challenges, because listening/speaking as information exchange is such a regular occurrence. We noticed that the active listening with intent slowed the pace of the communication down. In some ways, it expanded our sense of space and slowed down our sense of time.

With others, choosing to practise active listening when walking outdoors amplified this expansion of space and time even further. One person commented that the influence of the rhythm of trees, nature, soil expanded her way of holding the conversation in a more spacious manner.

A contrast to the exchange of information in the homework conversation arose from some people noticing the role that silence can play. Some silences were short and marked simply by noticing how breathing can both modify what they heard or said and how they heard or said it. A heightened awareness arises because of the pace of the conversation marked by breaths.

Several others commented on the experience of listening while walking as compared to sitting indoors. Even the relationship of walking alongside while listening/talking brought a wider sense of inclusiveness than sitting opposite one another (the pattern often preferred by women) or beside one another (the pattern often preferred by men). Also driving in the car while practising listening can impact the quality of the container for activity and intention.

2. So What does the topic/homework on listening have to do with Integral City practice or training?

It was easy to see how active listening with intent connected to Integral City practice. Listening is core to the Inquiry Intelligence. This homework practice helped us to realize that posing a good question must always be followed by a listening intention – whether that is to notice what other people say or to the sometimes “deafening” or intentional silence that can follow.

Several practitioners noticed that listening can be calibrated to the levels of complexity (as expressed by Spiral Dynamics integral or Integral). At each level, what you value will provide filters to how you listen and what you say. Moreover, at each level of complexity Who says What as a spokesperson can give weight to how we listen.

We mentioned very public examples of this, that surfaced during the Brexit vote in the UK and the results of the 2016 Trump election. In both cases, large groups of people expressed anger, disappointment and felt misunderstood. These were voices in the city that related to citizens who did not feel heard and were blocked out by many “official listeners” such as electoral candidates, the media and other so-called special interest groups (sometimes called “elites”).

Being able to listen intently at the levels of complexity that want to be expressed but may be ignored can make the difference in engaging the 4 Voices of the city. If we marginalize voices, in our modern city they have many ways to make themselves heard. It is vital in our Integral City listening practice that we notice Who are the Voicers, What is being Voiced and Where are the Listeners (who care).

Ironically, we noticed that this demands active listeners to broaden out their capacities as both Listeners and Speakers. We must be aware of the states of change in the Integral City. Because listening to the city can tell us who and where city voices are listening to the winds of change that affect them. Each person and each group has a way of sensing – the fair winds and fair words of relative contentment that sound like a happy hum; the storms that mark unwelcome change that sound like a grumble warning; the tornados that signal screams and growls of blocked anger and fear; the sunny ways that follow extreme bad weather as people laugh with relief and new hope; and the hum of new-found contentment when people speak to, listen happily and repeat new solutions to life’s challenges.

 

3. Now What will we do as a result, of our listening homework experience and sharing?

Because of our exploration of listening actively with intent we took away core learnings and more questions.

We realized that listening is critical to the Human Hive Mind – it is akin to gathering the pollen that we can then feed each other. As listeners and speakers in Integral City we are the Human Hive Mind practising, expressing and communicating as the field itself.
Listening is also critical to the practise of prototyping. Through listening we can learn where the energy is in the human system and what wants to happen next.
We noticed that we will listen to open us up to the soundscape of the Integral City, the habitat as the Human Hive. We can hear if we listen intently, the sounds that resonate to the voices of self, others, place and planet (the sounds of the Master Code itself). We can also consider how listening is the sounds of the city as a living system (like the bee hive), metabolizing energy, matter and information.
We will seek and support the contribution of green plants in the city to promote calmer states of mind and listening.
We understand that the Inquiry Intelligence may surface negativity. But we wondered how long we can allow negativity to influence the container for listening and positive outcomes?
One answer we will listen for more intently is how multiple levels and lenses can support and amplify our antennae for listening to different voices. We will notice how this can take us beyond ego/self to listen with the ears of the Other.
Finally, in the built city, this way of listening can influence and attract different architectural designs for spaces of all kinds – we will notice the impact of the cathedral to both raise voices (of gratitude) and hush silence (of deep respect).

Give attention to your intention for facilitating

This is one of series of blogs that are a retrospective reflection on Integral City Community of Practice’s experience in taking the In This Together (ITT) course on basic facilitation skills taught by Diane Musho Hamilton and Ten Directions.

Our first instruction was how to give attention to our intention as we are facilitating. In fact, we were asked to form an intention for taking this course. After teaching and small group discussions we received homework.

Pay Attention with Intention

Here is the ITT homework we were given.

Be present to all reality (AQAL) as it happens.
Spend time noticing what IS happening. Don’t do anything just stay put and notice.
As you catch yourself in communication on a daily basis, remember your intention that you formed for this course.

One week after the module we explored these questions.

1. What did we experience in accomplishing the homework?

Integral City Community of Practise (COP) noticed that intention showed up as energy in the body. By stating intention for facilitating, it intensifies our capacities for listening. We presence ourselves and the context we are in on a deeper basis.

When we just notice intention, it is non-mental but at the same time very spiritual and full of conscious awareness.

We shared that we noticed attention regarding US election campaign and Canadian political broken promises (related to First Nations). Being aware of our attention, helped us notice deep emotions (like anger) and our willingness and readiness to share with others.

Paying attention with intention even helped us to be good friends. “It’s so nice to have a friend who can be honest.”

2.So What does the topic/homework have to do with Integral City practice or training?

When we shifted our exploration to what the practice of giving attention to our intention in the context of our Integral City work, one key observation was that it took us beyond the superficial level of engaging with issues or people. In fact, when we notice as deeply and as widely as possible, we actually cultivate the Human Hive Mind. This can happen on a 1-to-1 basis or when facilitating with many.

3.Now What will we do as a result, of our homework experience and sharing?

We remarked that Diane Hamilton’s experience as a mediator helped us to see how important that paying attention to our intention and the intention of others can contribute to improving the value of any communication or teaching. This certainly applies to situations which are conflicted (as Marilyn shared she was experiencing on a NFP Society Board she was serving) but also even thinking about designing teaching courses.

We would apply the principles of paying attention and identifying intention to Integral City training. This would help us to anchor our courses as teachers and also assist our students to anchor their learning intentions.

We realized that in our city cultures, just noticing is vital. Finally, we agreed that this “simple” practice of noticing attention and intention was basic to the development of Human Hive Mind.

Integral City “In This Together” – Learning Retrospective

In October and November 2016, key members from Integral City’s Community of Practice and Constellation signed on to learn facilitation basics with Ten Directions’  “In This Together” (ITT) online course.

Linda, Alia, Diana Claire, Anne-Marie, Pieter, Marilyn and Kara attended via Zoom from the comfort of their workplace and/or abodes in Surrey BC, Seattle Washington, Ottawa Ontario, Hilversum NL, Amsterdam NL and Durant Oklahoma.

Diane Musho Hamilton, the course teacher, covered 1 topic each week related to effective facilitation. Diane not only shared her experience as mediator, Zen Master and facilitator, she also gave us homework to practice each week’s topic. Over the 9 weeks, we practised:

Giving attention to our intention for facilitating
Listening intently and actively
Expressing our message clearly and congruently
Recognizing the multiple points of view at the table
Questioning to understand
Embracing feeling & emotion to transmute negatives into positives
Leveraging conflict through shared intention
Giving and receiving feedback
Enjoying our facilitator role and relationships

Our Integral City learners added value to the teaching each week by convening on our own Zoom call to share our homework experiences through 3 action research questions:

What did each of us experience in accomplishing the homework?
So What does the topic/homework have to do with Integral City practice or training?
Now What will we do as a result, of our homework experience and sharing?

One big insight gained by the Integral City team was that sharing the homework really brought home the relevance of the course to Integral City practice and even the Human Hive Mind. The next series of blogs will share our value-adding discoveries for each topic.

Integral City Reflective Organ September 2016: Celebrating City Renewal

 

This newsletter is published quarterly using a cycle of perspectives on the Integral City viewed from: Planet, People, Place and Power. The theme of this issue is Place.

Renewal in the city depends on many of the capacities people have developed for adaptiveness to their environment. Renewal becomes possible because adaptiveness in the city emerges from massive redundancy in the bio-psycho-cultural-social spheres. For its survival and success, the city does not depend on one ruler or superhero (compared to a castle or feudal manor that did). Instead the city depends on the relationships amongst key roles that have evolved out of a species’ group mind and its ability to shift and flex depending on the life conditions. Renewal emerges because a city, like all living systems, develops cyclical habits that enable the accumulation, exploitation, distribution and redeployment of resources. …Living systems have natural stages through which they cycle and sequences of super-cycles that result in the evolution of complexity over time. [And in cities] those stages occur at different levels of scale: for ecologies, species, systems, organizations and individuals …

Hamilton, M. (2008). Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive. Gabriola Island BC: New Society Publishers p.38

It’s September – Renew Your City-Celebration Vows!!

It does not seem surprising to me that so many people hold a deep affection for their city as the Place that holds much of what they call dear. But, for that very reason I do find it surprising that cities do not have days to celebrate themselves as special places that support the lives of all who live there and contribute to the support of lives in other cities where trade flows back and forth.

Several years ago I nominated September as the month for cities to celebrate themselves. (See the blogs links under Free Resources below for some of my ideas on how to do so.) That suggestion seems especially poignant in 2016 as we acknowledge the 15th anniversary of 9/11 and how the terrorist attack impacted New York. As we know through the many stories from victims’ families, survivors, first responders, city officials, other cities and nations, 9/11 in NYC has become an archetype of the dark threats that terrorize the city-habitats where our daily lives and very existence play out.

As the ripple of copycat-9/11 threats to cities has spread around the world, the city, as our most complex human system yet created, gains implicit as well as explicit value in our esteem. Each city’s way of manifesting history, geography, voices, intelligences and governance adds up to its unique sense of place. What I imagined cities celebrating, surrounds us in the present and is firmly rooted in the past.

But what happens when the future intrudes into our sensibilities of the city? What happens when we build the structures and infrastructures of the city for a future population and hold them like an inventory or warehouse of buildings? Are these cities without people (dubbed Zombie Cites) lacking the life that emerges when cities grow organically with the people who will populate them? This is what China has done and continues to do. (See Free Resources blog links below on China’s new cities.) Strangely enough, while I can admire the technical feat of this accomplishment, the images of these cities without people lack the spark of life that is the essence of what we are inspired to celebrate in cities.

At the same time the idea of neo-cities – offered by futurists who want to create the ideal city for an elite group of highly educated and productive people (see Free Resources blog links below) – seem to be cousins of China’s new cities. While the neo-city designers imagine a technologically advanced and even environmentally smart city, they seem to overlook the fabric that consciousness and culture of a whole ecology of people who contribute to the vibrancy of city life, their multiple generations, perspectives, genetic differences, creative variations, tensions and intentions.

Recently I have heard Yuval Harari postulate that humankind is on the verge of overcoming death. He suggests that as homo deus we have (theoretically ,with much evidence indicating the positive trends) overcome famine, plague and war. In the interview I heard, Harari suggested that the artificially intelligent creations (aka robots) that humans are now testing may be more intelligent than homo sapiens within the next decade. If that proposition comes to pass, I imagine that they will be located (by human choice?) in the elite neo-cities removed from the organic, emergent and messy lives that I am inspired to celebrate in our cities of today.

As a city evolutionist I have argued that cities are social holons demonstrating the characteristics of living systems: surviving, connecting to their environments and regenerating. But the city I celebrate will transcend and INCLUDE the people, cultures, behaviours and systems that have brought us to today, and will propel us into the future, rather than EXCLUDE them – as the new-neo-deitic imaginations seem to suggest. The ecological reality of the city’s vibrant inclusiveness is what impresses the minds and hearts of astronauts with an “overview effect”  when they have viewed our amazing blue Earth with all its city reflections from space. IMO,the evolution of this city-social holon into the hive-mind of collective consciousness is the most likely way for the evolution of cities is likely to produce vibrant, intelligence for a resilient future.

And that vibrant, living and life-giving quality of cities – with all its emergent messiness – is what I renew with my celebration vow for the city this September.

I hope you will join me and the city-celebrants we share in this newsletter from Victoria, St. Petersburg, Findhorn and online, as we celebrate ways our city futures are evolving together.

Bring People & Place Together from Ten Directions

In this Together Training from Ten Directions offers Skills that Bring People Together

If you are working with teams and groups in cities, your effectiveness depends on bringing people together. If you are facilitating or leading change, your impact depends on skilled communication and relating. If you are leading or guiding others, your behavior has a huge influence on how people around you function every day.

Integral City invites you to join us in participating with Ten Directions in a new online training with award-winning facilitator, conflict resolution expert, author and trainer, Diane Musho Hamilton.
 When/Where/How/What

Training Starts on Tuesday, October 4th
Sessions will take place weekly on Tuesdays at 12 pm MT
Live, interactive video training sessions will be 75-minutes long
Each session will include teaching, interactive practice, and Q&A
TrainVing includes supplemental reading and summary PDFs of all sessions
All sessions will be recorded and available for download

This training has been approved for professional continuing education credits by key HR and Coach Certification accreditation organizations.

iew 3 Free Tutorial videos and Register here.

 

Make a Place We Can All Call Home: Soul-Work for Earth Partisans

Placemaking is a human art and practice from time immemorial. Primarily, it is people who make a place – the people in the place, the people of the place. But this can often be missed today, through being ‘lost in space’.

This course is for those who sense a ‘maker’ of sorts within themselves, including their role in the making of the places that they happen to love and cherish. It is for those with an interest in becoming a better maker of such places with others.  Our relationship with place can easily be taken for granted, but it might well merit closer discernment to help us better negotiate these challenging times – together. In this course we ask, how might we go about making a place we can all call home? What’s the story here? The underlying poetry?  The divinity at work?

Program Overview: In four, weekly, two-hour, encounters we explore what we might mean by place, especially vis-à-vis space, wondering about its sacred and secular attributes, and its combination of primalcy and potency. Consider our ‘sense of place’, in terms of sensing place within us … Prospect the qualities of place, with particular interest in place as an integration of … physicality, functionality, conviviality and spirituality. Speculate on the essence of place as something we make collectively, as a form of ‘coming home’ together. What metaphors, or story-lines, or poetry, might resonate as part of our common meaning-making? To what extent might placemaking be regarded as ‘soul-work for earth partisans’? The aim will be to get in better touch with the placemaker in each and all of us – the people who make the places that matter, in pursuit of our Anam Cara (drawing on the work of John O’Donohue).

Presented and facilitated by Ian Wight PhD FCIP: a Canadian Scot, who has been a mentor to Integral City while being an educator of professional planners and a professional planning practitioner. True to his Scottish ancestry, Ian loves a really good ‘blether’ that bridges the personal, the professional and the spiritual. In this offering he draws particularly on application of an integral perspective, grounded in a selection of blessings from John O’Donohue’s To Bless the Space Between Us.

Location: Programs in Earth Literacies – Victoria BC – Fall 2016

Friends Meeting House, 1831 Fern St, Victoria BC: 7pm to 9pm

Dates/Time: Wednesdays, September 28, October 5, 12 and 19, 2016, [4 x 2hr Exploration]

Registration: The program cost is $75 (four sessions), or $20 drop-in (single session). Ask about our scholarship program. Email: earthliteracies@gmail.com. Telephone: 250-220-4601 or 604-272-4779

By cheque: Make cheques payable to: The Living Language Institute Foundation. Mailing address: Programs in Earth Literacies,, PO Box 28114, West Shore RPO, Victoria BC V9B 6K8

Or pay by charge card via website: www.earthliteracies.org

 

The Place of Organizations in the City

Eugene Pustoshkin, located in St. Petersburg and Russian translator of Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive (and co-creator of Eros and Kosmos) has just written a powerful and perceptive article on Transformations on the Path to Really Teal & Turquoise Organizations.

As we have written before, reinventing organizations plays a key role in reinventing cities, our most complex human creation.

Eugene says, “The idea of “teal organizations” is described in Frederick Laloux’s book Reinventing Organizations (click here for a link to our series of blogs on how Reinventing Organizations impacts the city); and it is gaining popularity today both globally and in Russia.

“Hundreds of entrepreneurs and business leaders in various companies—from IT to banks—seek new forms of self-organizing. They’re tired of limitations that are inherent to classical hierarchical subdivisions, their low efficiency and effectiveness and incapacity to flexibly adapt to the VUCA world (that is, our world that is now characterized by volatility, uncertainty, change, ambiguity, fluidity, chaos, instability, and so on).

“. . . This trend provides many auspicious opportunities: it inspires new explorations and studies which eventually lead to becoming acquainted with the larger, revolutionary Integral framework. There are also undercurrents which potentially may serve as hindrances and obstacles. In order to clarify a bigger vision of what it would actually take for an integral or second-tier or teal/turquoise organizations to emerge, Eugene created this diagram.

“You see, in most cases lay people are not familiar with either Ken Wilber’s Integral theory or Don Beck’s Spiral Dynamics Integral (SDi)—Laloux’s work is inspired by both frameworks. Lay folks think that it is sufficient to make just a one-step transformation—to relinquish old organizational models and undertake a new, “teal” or “turquoise” model of organization. That’s a grave error which could lead to really devastating consequences. In fact, everyone who wants to shift towards, teal organizations, must catalyze (and undergo) a series of quite complex step-by-step transformations that span many years and literally affect all major areas of life. …”

This article will be featured in Integral Leadership Review (November 2016).

Read the full article here.

 

The Place of the Eldest Daughter @ Findhorn

Findhorn International Forum for Eldest Daughters is a 3.5-day retreat for firstborn women only.  Hosts are Lisette Schuitemaker, Helen Wildsmith and Gill Emslie.

Inspiration for the gathering is the book The Eldest Daughter Effect written by Lisette Schuitemaker and Wies Enthoven and published by Findhorn Press in October 2016.

Expert facilitator and long-term Findhorn resident Gill Emslie will guide participants in deepening individual and collective insights into the patterns that eldest daughters share, realizing how to harness undisputed strengths and avoid the inevitable pitfalls in personal and professional life. Explore your own questions, reflect, meditate and spend time in nature.

 Location:  Findhorn Foundation, the educational charity at the heart of the renowned spiritual community and ecovillage at the edge of the seashore Findhorn village in Scotland. Findhorn is about a 40-minute drive from Inverness Airport.

Date: Saturday March 18, 2017 12 noon to 5 PM Tuesday March 21, 2017

Contact & Registration: Lisette Schuitemaker lisette@corecompany.nl

 

Celebrating City Places in the Coming Quarter of 2016

September 21 marks the start of what Integral City calls the Place Quarter (from September 21 to December 20). What perspectives on place do you bring to celebrate the City at this time of year? What places, spaces, structures, systems and and the ways people use them, inspire and attract you? We notice the experiments of Teal organizations, new cities and neo-cities demand attention even as cities are still distracted by the consequences of famines, plagues and wars, and even while new evolutionary intelligences hint at the emergence of hive-mind. Visit us on the new Integral City Website and Blog and post a comment about the vibrant place you call the Human Hive.

Meshful Blessings for all Human Hive Places
Marilyn Hamilton and the  Integral City Constellation Core Team

 

PS Here are some Free Resources for nurturing Place in the Human Hive:

Three Online Video Tutorials with Diane Hamilton
Kosmos Online Newsletter: Healing the Earth, Healing Ourselves
Integral City Blogs on Place:


What Part of the Master Code is Not Working for the Human Hive?
New Cities in China

A City Without People is not a City
Building a [City] Bridge Without Walking on It
China Why Not House the Refugees in your Empty New Cities?
Burtynsky and Caemerrer Photographs Haunt Cities
ZomBees versus Zombie Cities


Neo-Cities – Considerations for Design

Are Neo-Cities Human Hives?
What are Neo-Cities Forgetting?
Neo-Civics for a Neo-City?


Celebrating the City

City Day: Why Don’t We Celebrate the Most Complex Human System?
Celebrate City as Gaia’s Reflective Organ
City Organs on Parade
Celebrating the City Has Evolutionary Impact
What Month Should Celebrate City Day?

What Month Should Celebrate City Day?

If I were going to choose a month to celebrate City Day, I would propose September. Why?  Because it is the start of Spring in the southern hemisphere and the start of Fall in the Northern Hemisphere. One season embraces new life and the other early harvest. Both seasons hold promise and natural impulses for celebration.

Another reason I suggest September,  is because this month was also the time of the most infamous assault on one of the world’s most complex cities – the 9/11 terrorist attack on New York City – where people from around the world died??

For whatever reason, in whatever season, may our Planet of Cities discover the many ways we can celebrate the human hive!!

References

Hamilton, M. (2008). Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive. Gabriola Island BC: New Society Publishers.

Hamilton, M., Beck, C., Fisher, V., & Marx Hubbard, B. (2011). Grok Talk Walk Rock: Choreography for 4 Generations in the Human Hive; Presentation Slides. World Future Society 2011. Vancouver, Canada: World Future Society.

Barnett, T. P. M. (2005). The Pentagon’s New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century (trade paperback ed.). New York: The Berkley Publishing Group.

Beck, D., & Cowan, C. (1996). Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership and Change. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.

Bopp, J., & Bopp, M. (2006). Recreating the World: A practical guide to building sustainable communities Calgary, Canada: Four Worlds Press.

Cooperrider, D., & Whitney, D. (1999). Appreciative Inquiry: Collaborating for Change. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

Friedman, T. L. (1999). The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization (hardcover ed.). New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.

Friedman, T. L. (2005). The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century (hardcover ed.). New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.

Lovelock, J. (2009). The Vanishing Face of Gaia. New York: Harmony Books.

Miller, J. G. (1978). Living Systems. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company.

Peck, M. S. (1987). The Different Drum: Community-Making and Peace. New York: Touchstone, Simon & Schuster Inc.

Peck, M. S. (1993). A World Waiting to be Born. New York: Bantam Books.

Porkert, M., M.D., & Ullmann, D. C. (1988). Chinese Medicine (M. Howson, Trans.). New York: William Morrow and Company Inc.

Watkins, J. M., & Mohr, B. J. (2001). Appreciative Inquiry: Change at the Speed of Imagination. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer.

Whitney, D., & Trosten-Bloom, A. (2010 ). The Power of Appreciative Inquiry: A Practical Guide to Positive Change (2nd rev. ed.). San Francisco, Calif.: Berrett-Koehler.

Wilber, K. (1995). Sex, Ecology and Spirituality: the spirit of evolution. Boston: Shambhala Publications Inc.

Wilber, K. (2000). A Theory of Everything. Boston: Shambhala Publications Inc.

Wilber, K. (2007). The Integral Vision. Boston: Shambhala Publications Inc.

Wilber, K., Patten, T., Leonard, A., & Morelli, M. (2006). Integral Life Practice: A 21st Century Blueprint for Physcial Health, Emotional Balance, Mental Clarity and Spiritual Awakening (1 ed.). Boston, MA: Integral Books.

Celebrating the City Has Evolutionary Impact

If we created City Day to celebrate our cities, this celebration would bring a focus to the value of the city to the majority of humans world-wide. It has the possibility of connecting silos, stovepipes and solitudes within the city.

Regular city celebration would create a pattern of aligning diverse individual intentions to a celebratory purpose, bonding different cultures to a super-ordinate goal and negotiating resources across multiple interests. City celebrations could create a healthy competitive spirit between cities, encouraging cities to learn from each other (something the natural world encourages as intergroup tournaments within species – like the survival of the most resilient beehives who pollinate a single field).

City celebration is an act of appreciation. Like the methodology of appreciative inquiry it will open up a process of discovering who and what the city can celebrate, dreaming what is possible, designing the celebration and implementing the design. Such an act of multi-stakeholder engagement will point the city system into an appreciative direction which will raise the levels of awareness about the assets, benefits and capitals in the city.

Such a City Celebration may be the next step for humans to becoming city centric. The act of co-creating cultural consciousness will encourage city-zens to own the city through witnessing its value. Such action will not only take back city heritage but may allow City-Zens to claim it for the first time.

This city scale of appreciation could then act as a springboard for larger scales of appreciation at the eco-region and global levels. Perhaps, city celebration can act as a super-ordinate goal that will engender coherence at a scale most people can relate to. And in so doing we may mature the capacity of the human species into more vibrant effectiveness as Gaia’s Reflective Organ?

Just reflecting.

City Organs on Parade

Lovelock has proposed that humans are Gaia’s reflective organ and I suggest that, in fact, individuals are cells in the cities who are the actual organs of a whole organ system now alive on Gaia.  So with those thoughts in mind, perhaps we are at the seminal moment for us humans to consider not just how we have translated our reflective capacities into cities but also how the other capacities that enable cities to function are actions, relationships and productivity.

Happily an Integral City view using our Map 1 of the city allows us to easily situate these capacities into four quadrants (so familiar to this readership). And I would suggest this map even gives us a parade route to celebrate the city.

Parade Route to Celebrate the City

Such a celebration could last a day, a week or a month. Why don’t cities hold contests for formats to celebrate the city, requesting that at the minimum the proposals celebrate the city through its holarchies its quadrants or holarchies or just hold a guided walk? tour? bicycle regatta? parade? that leads the citizens literally from one city institution to another, recognizing the necessary contributions of these institutional organs of city life. Depending on the layout of the city, institutional locations would be selected to start the parade at the UR City’s Brain – City Hall: where reside the many functions of City Administration such as, Planning, Public Works, Justice and Emergency Response. Then the guided tour could progress to the institutions devoted to the:

UL City’s Mind – Education: School Board, Universities, Kindergarten

UR City’s Body – Healthcare: Hospitals, Clinics, Alternative

LL City’s Heart – Civil Society: Churches/Synagogues, Mosques

LR City’s Energy/Information/Matter Flow Systems – Developers: Built City, Financial District, Businesses, Eco-Region

Finally the city tour/day would culminate in the celebration of the

AQAL City’s Faith Systems – Mosques, Synagogues, Churches – celebrating the many ways people practise their spiritual beliefs and demonstrate the Master Code.

The celebration could borrow the tradition of street parties on a city-wide level organized by/for/with the City-Zens. This celebration should be so much fun everyone wants to join in.

Celebrate City as Gaia’s Reflective Organ

City of Organs

Traditional Chinese medicine embraces a geography of the human body that reflects an energy flow model of the body, where energy cycles through the body organs along meridian pathways in daily rhythms. The Chinese refer to the body’s organs as “officials”.

Map 1: 4 quadrant 8 level Map of City Organs

In thinking about the city as the human system writ large, I have relied on Miller’s interdisciplinary research that demonstrates that all living systems (including cell, organelle, organ, body, team, organization, sector, city-state)  have evolved three major systems for managing information, energy and matter (and 19 sub-systems).

Both the traditional and scientific models of the human system are richly served by the post-modern worldviews that demonstrate sustainability requires inclusivity and tolerance of all the stakeholders in any human system such as a community and city.  In a city where traditional, modern and post-modern realities co-exist it serves us to have a map that allows us to celebrate every truth, so that we can emerge from these true but partial views, a picture of the whole city.

Integral City integrates all of the organs, systems, and stakeholders into an integrated view and gives us a map of the city with reflective, acting, relating, productive organs.

James Lovelock  has recognized the evolutionary value of the human species as Gaia’s reflective organ. When we consider the scale of the social holon that is the city, we might propose that individual humans are cells and Gaia’s actual reflective organ is the city. Furthermore, as a planet of cities our city organs are just evolving into the level of interconnected elegance that the organs of our individual bodies enjoy. But if Lovelock’s proposition is correct, we should not only reflect on our reflective service to the planet, but celebrate in each of our cities the evolutionary progress we are making.

References

Hamilton, M. (2008). Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive. Gabriola Island BC: New Society Publishers.

Hamilton, M., Beck, C., Fisher, V., & Marx Hubbard, B. (2011). Grok Talk Walk Rock: Choreography for 4 Generations in the Human Hive; Presentation Slides. World Future Society 2011. Vancouver, Canada: World Future Society.

Barnett, T. P. M. (2005). The Pentagon’s New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century (trade paperback ed.). New York: The Berkley Publishing Group.

Beck, D., & Cowan, C. (1996). Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership and Change. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.

Bopp, J., & Bopp, M. (2006). Recreating the World: A practical guide to building sustainable communities Calgary, Canada: Four Worlds Press.

Cooperrider, D., & Whitney, D. (1999). Appreciative Inquiry: Collaborating for Change. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

Friedman, T. L. (1999). The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization (hardcover ed.). New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.

Friedman, T. L. (2005). The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century (hardcover ed.). New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.

Lovelock, J. (2009). The Vanishing Face of Gaia. New York: Harmony Books.

Miller, J. G. (1978). Living Systems. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company.

Peck, M. S. (1987). The Different Drum: Community-Making and Peace. New York: Touchstone, Simon & Schuster Inc.

Peck, M. S. (1993). A World Waiting to be Born. New York: Bantam Books.

Porkert, M., M.D., & Ullmann, D. C. (1988). Chinese Medicine (M. Howson, Trans.). New York: William Morrow and Company Inc.

Watkins, J. M., & Mohr, B. J. (2001). Appreciative Inquiry: Change at the Speed of Imagination. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer.

Whitney, D., & Trosten-Bloom, A. (2010 ). The Power of Appreciative Inquiry: A Practical Guide to Positive Change (2nd rev. ed.). San Francisco, Calif.: Berrett-Koehler.

Wilber, K. (1995). Sex, Ecology and Spirituality: the spirit of evolution. Boston: Shambhala Publications Inc.

Wilber, K. (2000). A Theory of Everything. Boston: Shambhala Publications Inc.

Wilber, K. (2007). The Integral Vision. Boston: Shambhala Publications Inc.

Wilber, K., Patten, T., Leonard, A., & Morelli, M. (2006). Integral Life Practice: A 21st Century Blueprint for Physcial Health, Emotional Balance, Mental Clarity and Spiritual Awakening (1 ed.). Boston, MA: Integral Books.

 

 

City Day: Why Don’t We Celebrate the Most Complex Human System?

 Celebration MIA

On this fifteenth anniversary of both the infamy and redress of New York’s 9/11 World Trade Center attack, I look around the world at the many days we set aside as celebrations and I am struck by a major omission.

We celebrate the planet with Earth Day. Most nations celebrate a Nation Day – Independence Day, Canada Day, Queen’s Day, Bastille Day, etc.  We celebrate causes such as Pride Day or recognize health awareness like Heart Month. We have Festival Days that vary with the geography and the season – Berry Festival, Ice Festival, Festival of Lights. We have drama festivals, sports festivals and ethnic celebrations like Diwali, Christmas, Passover. We have parades for Saints Day, Santa Claus and Carnaval, We have Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and some places even have Family Day.

But in a planet of cities why don’t we have City Day for our individual cities??

Why Don’t We Celebrate the City?

When I look around the world the closest I can come to identifying a City Day, is ironically the I Love NY buttons and themes. Many cities adapted these buttons to say I Love [city] to fulfil what I am coming to suspect is a deep longing and even a need.

And for many who consider New York to be the archetype of all modern cities, on this September 11, fifteenth anniversary of the greatest assault on NYC as a symbol for man’s accomplishments in creating cities, perhaps it is more than fitting that I Love NY be remembered, and honoured for our relationship to all cities??

The many celebrations I have charted above arise from the evolutionary path of our species. We have matured through the social structures of family, clan, state, nation, regional federation and global United Nations. We are stumbling as we attempt to make the global scale of our systemic structures align into some vestige of coherence. It is enormously difficult because the levels of culture and consciousness vary so much from one part of the world to another. This impedes effective inter-nation governanceand impacts both global and local economics.  So it is not surprising that not everyone signs declarations, when we attempt to attract celebrants to support global theme days such as Earth Day or Water Day. Seemingly innocuous pro-sustainability celebrations such as these are challenged by belief systems that are not yet ready to recognize celebrations that span the globe, supporting survival of all life, including human life.

I wonder if we need to step back and ask ourselves if we could build support for world-centric causes more effectively, by finding ways to celebrate our cities and their eco-regions?

While more than 50% of humanity lives in cities now, probably close to 95% of humanity lives in urban settlements of some kind (from hamlets to villages, to towns) . Thus we have a shared experience of living most of our lives in social systems where most of our actions, thoughts, relationships and productivity take place. But, isn’t it strange that we haven’t been inspired to recognize, admire and celebrate the city that contains so much life?

My family gave me a small poster one Mother’s day many years ago – it says “Why is it that we only notice you when you aren’t here?”  What would happen if our cities stopped functioning? How would that impact our lives?

The answer to that question is disturbingly easy to find. We have been able to view it on CNN every time a natural (and/or human made) disaster has struck and disabled a city – be it Tokyo, Los Angeles, Port au Prince, Sendai, Christchurch, New York, New Orleans or Chernobyl. We are less attentive when the slow and painful economic attritions eat the guts of cities from the inside out – such as happened in Glasgow at the beginning of the 20th century or Detroit at the end. And we often don’t want to know when cities are attacked by microscopic biologies (like Toronto with SARS or Hong Kong with avian flu). But we start to get quite nervous when the explosions of tribal warfare erupt in what we thought were stable city cultures – like Moscow, Paris, Brussels, San Bernardino, Orlando, Nice, Aleppo or Delhi.

The truth is that our cities are now repositories of so much wealth and complexity that they are precious and vulnerable living systems, whose existence deserves to be celebrated.

For cities are not just artefacts of human ingenuity, but they are social holons – whole systems including and embracing a holarchy of human systems from the individual to the family, groups, teams, organizations, neighbourhoods, institutions, work places, sectors and all the interconnective systems that enable the holarchy to function as a city.

Integral City Map 2: Nested Holarcy of City Systems

Our Cities Deserve a Celebration

So why don’t we celebrate the city? She deserves a celebration just as every belief tradition celebrates the individual through birthdays, name days, graduation days, etc. Celebrating the city would give us the satisfaction of recognizing for one day a year, the city (and her eco-region) that supports our very existence and survival. For the city is the human being (and human becoming) writ large. She has all the body, brain, mind, heart and soul that humans possess. And if for no other reason we should celebrate that we have co-created a system that lives, works, plays and recreates in reflection of who we are as a species as we have created our Human Hives.

Bee – Human Hive – Tijmen Brozius

~

Footnotes:

The governance variances have been well charted by Thomas Barnett (Barnett, 2005) who pointed out that the world had emerged into the countries of a “functioning core” who are connected and those that exist in a non-integrated “gap” where their connections are blocked, technologically behind and/or blind (lacking infrastructure for IT, communications and social media).

 

The economics variances have been effectively enumerated by Thomas Friedman(Friedman, 1999, 2005) who argues that countries who trade together are unlikely to war together, and  that as trans-global economics become more interconnected vested interests become entangled. This has become painfully obvious from the 2008 US Prime Mortgage financial outfalls and the current EU financial imbroglio.

95% figure suggested by Richard Register in interview for the Integral City eLaboratory, 2012